Cheer up, old man. Things might be worse, you know.

"Oh, hell!" Hollister exploded.

After which he relapsed into sullen silence, to which Rutherford,
frankly mystified and somewhat inclined to resent this self-contained
mood, presently left him.

Hollister was glad when the man went away. He had a feeling of relief
when the door closed and retreating footsteps echoed down the hall. He
had grasped at a renewal of Rutherford's acquaintance as a man
drowning in a sea of loneliness would grasp at any friendly straw. And
Rutherford, Hollister quickly realized, was the most fragile sort of
straw. The man was a profound, non-thinking egotist, the adventurer
pure and simple, whose mentality never rose above grossness of one
sort and another, in spite of a certain outward polish. He could
tolerate Hollister's mutilated countenance because he had grown
accustomed to horrible sights,--not because he had any particular
sympathy for a crippled, mutilated man's misfortune, or any
understanding of such a man's state of feeling. To Rutherford that was
the fortune of war. So many were killed. So many crippled. So many
disfigured. It was luck. He believed in his own luck. The evil that
befell other men left him rather indifferent. That was all. When
Hollister once grasped Rutherford's attitude, he almost hated the man.

He sat now staring out the window. A storm had broken over Vancouver
that day. To-night it was still gathering force. The sky was a
lowering, slate-colored mass of clouds, spitting squally bursts of
rain that drove in wet lines against his window and made the street
below a glistening area shot with tiny streams and shallow puddles